Red versus blue in black and white

Next week, the political parties will publish their election manifestos – except for the Labour party, which will release a special Director’s Cut of the manifesto draft leaked this week.

These manifesto launches will be covered extensively in the media, but very few people will ever read any party’s manifesto.

In 2010, the Labour party’s manifesto was downloaded 100,000 times – a number large in comparison with the number of political journalists covering the campaign, but much smaller in comparison to the total electorate.

Of course, people don’t need to read a manifesto to learn about its contents. They can learn indirectly by reading or watching media reports. Yet even here, there are grounds for skepticism about the impact of party manifestos. It seems as…